Jack Higgins - Thunder Point

“Not now, Brigadier.” Dillon closed his eyes. “I’m tired. Let’s leave it till later.”

The house at Chocolate Hole had never seemed so empty when Bob Carney entered it. He walked slightly aimlessly from room to room, then went in the kitchen and got a beer from the icebox. As he went to the living room the phone rang.

It was his wife, Karye. “Hi, honey, how are you?”

“I’m fine, just fine. How about the kids?”

“Oh, lively as usual. They miss you. This is an impulse call. We’re at a gas station near Orlando. I just stopped to fill up.”

“I’m sure looking forward to you coming back.”

“It won’t be long now,” she said. “I know it’s been lonely for you. Anything interesting happened?”

A slow smile spread across Carney’s face and he took a deep breath. “Not that I can think of. Same old routine.”

“Bye, honey, I’ll have to go.”

He put the phone down, drank some of his beer, went out on the porch. It was a fine, clear afternoon and he could see the islands on the other side of Pillsbury Sound and beyond. A long way, but not as far as Max Santiago had gone.

It was just before six o’clock the following evening in Ferguson’s office at the Ministry of Defence and Simon Carter sat on the other side of the desk, white-faced and shaken as Ferguson finished talking.

“So what’s to be done about the good Sir Francis?” Ferguson asked. “A Minister of the Crown, behaving not only dishonourably but in what can only be described as a criminal way.”

Dillon, standing by the window in a blue Burberry trenchcoat, lit a cigarette and Carter said, “Does he have to be here?”

“Nobody knows more of this affair than Dillon, can’t keep him out of it now.”

Carter picked up the Blue Book file, hesitated, then put it down and unfolded the Windsor Protocol to read it again. “I can’t believe this is genuine.”

“Perhaps not, but the rest of it is.” Ferguson reached across for the documents, replaced them in the briefcase and closed it. “The Prime Minister will see us at Downing Street at eight. Naturally I haven’t invited Sir Francis. I’ll meet you there.”

Carter got up. “Very well.”

He went to the door, was reaching for the handle when Ferguson said, “Oh, and Carter.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t do anything stupid like phoning Pamer. I’d stay well clear of this if I were you.”

Carter’s face sagged, he turned wearily and went out.

It was ten minutes later and Sir Francis Pamer was clearing his desk at the House of Commons before leaving for the evening when his phone rang. “Pamer here,” he said.

“Charles Ferguson.”

“Ah, you’re back, Brigadier,” Pamer said warily.

“We need to meet,” Ferguson told him.

“Quite impossible tonight, I have a most important function, dinner with the Lord Mayor of London. Can’t miss that.”

“Max Santiago is dead,” Ferguson said, “and I have here, on my desk, the Bormann briefcase. The Blue Book makes very interesting reading. Your father is featured prominently on page eighteen.”

“Oh, dear God!” Pamer slumped down on his chair.

“I wouldn’t speak to Simon Carter about this if I were you,” Ferguson said. “That wouldn’t really be to your advantage.”

“Of course not, anything you say.” Pamer hesitated. “You haven’t spoken to the Prime Minister then?”

“No, I thought it best to see you first.”

“I’m very grateful, Brigadier, I’m sure we can work something out.”

“You know Charing Cross Pier?”

“Of course.”

“One of the river boats, the Queen of Denmark , leaves there at six forty-five. I’ll meet you on board. You’ll need an umbrella, by the way, it’s raining rather hard.”

Ferguson put down the phone and turned to Dillon, who was still standing by the window. “That’s it then.”

“How did he sound?” Dillon asked.

“Terrified.” Ferguson got up, went to the old-fashioned hall stand he kept in the corner and took down his overcoat, the type known to Guards officers as a British warm, and pulled it on. “But then, he would be, poor sod.”

“Don’t expect me to have any sympathy for him.” Dillon picked up the briefcase from the desk. “Come on, let’s get on with it,” and he opened the door and led the way out.

When Pamer arrived at Charing Cross Pier the fog was so thick that he could hardly see across the Thames. He bought his ticket from a steward at the head of the gangplank. The Queen of Denmark was scheduled to call in at Westminster Pier and eventually Cadogan Pier at Chelsea Embankment. A popular run on a fine summer evening, but on a night like this, there were few passengers.

Pamer had a look in the lower saloon where there were half-a-dozen passengers and a companionway to the upper saloon where he encountered only two ageing ladies talking to each other in whispers. He opened a glass door and went outside, and looked down. There was someone standing at the rail in the stern holding an umbrella over his head. He went back inside, descended the companionway and went out on deck, opening his umbrella against the driving rain.

“That you, Ferguson?”

He went forward hesitantly, his hand on the butt of the pistol in his right-hand raincoat pocket. It was a very rare weapon from the exclusive collection of World War Two handguns his father had left him, a Volka specially designed for use by the Hungarian Secret Service and as silenced as a pistol could be. He’d kept it in his desk at the Commons for years. The Queen of Denmark was moving away from the pier now and starting her passage upriver. Fog swirled up from the surface of the water, the light from the saloon above was yellow and sickly. There were no rear windows to the lower saloon. They were alone in their own private space.

Ferguson turned from the rail. “Ah, there you are.” He held up the briefcase. “Well, there it is. The Prime Minister’s having a look at eight o’clock.”

“Please, Ferguson,” Pamer pleaded. “Don’t do this to me. It’s not my fault that my father was a Fascist.”

“Quite right. It’s also not your fault that your father’s immense fortune in post-war years came from his association with the Nazi movement, the Kamaradenwerk. I can even excuse as simply weakness of character the way you’ve been happy over the years to accept a large, continuing income from Samson Cay Holdings, mostly money produced by Max Santiago’s more dubious enterprises. The drug business, for example.”

“Now look here,” Pamer began.

“Don’t bother to deny it. I’d asked Jack Lane to investigate your family’s financial background, not realizing I was sentencing him to death, of course. He’d really made progress before he was killed, or should I say murdered? I found his findings in his desk earlier today.”

“It wasn’t my fault, any of it,” Pamer said wildly. “All my father and his bloody love affair with Hitler. I had my family name to think of, Ferguson, my position in the Government.”

“Oh, yes,” Ferguson conceded. “Rather selfish of you, but understandable. What I can’t forgive is the fact that you acted as Santiago’s lap dog from the very beginning, fed him every piece of information you could. You sold me out, you sold out Dillon, putting us in danger of our very lives. It was your actions that resulted in Jennifer Grant being attacked twice, once in London where God knows what would have happened if Dillon hadn’t intervened. The second time in St. John, where she was severely injured and almost died. She’s in a hospital now.”

“I knew none of this, I swear.”

“Oh, everything was arranged by Santiago, I grant you that. What I’m talking about is responsibility. On Samson Cay, a poor old man called Joseph Jackson who gave me my first clue to the truth behind the whole affair, the man who was caretaker at the old Herbert Hotel in 1945, was brutally murdered just after talking to me. Now that was obviously the work of Santiago’s people, but how did he know of the existence of the old man in the first place? Because you told him.”